Onward Who: Why I still look forward to the new Doctor Who era (in spite of the politics)

Well, I can't put it off any longer. It's time to review the first offerings of the new Russell T Davies era of Doctor Who, "RTD 2" as the fans refer to it. It's not a straightforward business for me. I was torn about the three 60th Anniversary specials that I'd been looking forward to so much. They weren't bad by any means – I thought Neil Patrick Harris as the Toymaker was great fun, as I knew I would – but they didn't quite live up to my, admittedly sky-high, expectations. They felt more like three solid episodes from series four of Doctor Who (with Tennant back as the Doctor and Catherine Tate as Donna) than anniversary specials. I can hardly believe I'm saying this, but I think Chibnall did a better job of celebrating the show as a whole in The Power of the Doctor.

No prizes for guessing what my other major gripe against the specials was (mainly the first one). U-huh, that's right: politics.

I can at least take credit for having called it, to some extent. I knew we could expect some attempts at political commentary from Davies. The problem is that his judgement, when it comes to deciding how much of his own opinions it's OK to put in a show and how, seems to have got worse. The worst example of clumsy commentary was the way he botched the character of Rose – not the companion of the Ninth and Tenth Doctor, but Donna's trans daughter – in the first special "The Star Beast".

It started all right, with mother Donna's furious reaction to Rose's jeering classmates, and a conversation between Donna and her acerbic mum Sylvia about Rose which felt genuine and down-to-earth ("I just get so clumsy", Sylvia complains). I could have gone with this simple, no-nonsense message: This is Rose, Rose is nice, don't be mean to Rose. But then the jargon creeps in. Rose tuts when the Doctor "assumes 'he' as a pronoun" about an alien being; if the point had to be made, why couldn't she say something like "How do you know it's not a 'she'?". 

Then we learn that Rose has inherited a mind-melding condition linking her with the Doctor from her mother, which has resulted in her non-binary-ness as "the Doctor is male and female, and neither, and more". The lecture tour ends with Donna and Rose explaining that they can cure themselves of their condition by just "letting it go", something a "male-presenting Time Lord will never understand". I think most of the Doctor Who fandom collectively cringed at that line.

What bothers me so much about RTD's handling of Rose is his intention. That kind of speechifying isn't going to convince anyone who's still on the fence about trans issues, quite the reverse. Davies has done trans persons no favours. He's not even preaching to the choir, as even the choir seems to think it's a bit on the nose (and I gather the notion that Rose is only trans because her mum melded her mind with an alien has not met with universal approval). No, I can't help thinking that what Davies wanted to do here was purposefully annoy fans who've complained about the right-on-ness of the Chibnall era, along the lines of "They don't like woke? I'll give them woke!" Generally, putting something in a TV series just to annoy some viewers (maybe more than Davies had bargained for) doesn't make for good writing, and it's not good for the ratings either.

The "colour-blind" casting of Isaac Newton in "Wild Blue Yonder" seems to have been done in the same vein. Doctor Who has never resorted to this form of diversity-boosting before, as it has always (well, since 2005 anyway) had plenty of roles for actors of different ethnicities playing roles with the same ethnicity, which is surely preferable to "look, let's just pretend they're white"-casting. The charming Nathaniel Curtis was thus wasted in a cameo that will mostly just irritate people. In "The Giggle", as a contrast, we see Charlie (who happens to be black) enter a toyshop in London in 1925. The Toymaker, posing as a toyseller with a blatantly bogus German accent, remarks that Charlie must be "used to warmer climes". "I'm from Cheltenham", Charlie informs him stiffly. Better.

All in all, I liked "The Giggle" quite a lot. Commentary-wise, I think highlighting the wish to be always right as a 21-century vice is fair and cuts all sorts of ways. The dig at a faux-Boris PM was a bit cheap and also dated, but this is the kind of thing we saw in RTD's first run as Doctor Who showrunner as well. What with my tolerance already stretched by "male-presenting Time Lords" and the like, though, I would have preferred as little commentary as possible, and more focus on the game-playing between the Toymaker and the Doctor (the games they do play are disappointingly simple).

And then came the Christmas special with Ncuti Gatwa as the new, Fifteenth Doctor. And I loved it.

Not because of the goblins, honest. One could suspect that I'd be onboard with almost anything as long as you put goblins in it, but as adversaries go I have to admit they were a bit silly (their song was really catchy, though). But this was just a fun adventure and a promising set-up for Gatwa's Doctor and his new companion, Millie Gibson's Ruby Sunday. I can't have been the only one to complain, when the casting was first announced, that it was uninspired to give us yet another pretty English girl from present-day Earth as a Doctor companion, but Gibson won me over. Her Ruby has great matey chemistry with Gatwa's Doctor and just rolls with the improbable scenarios she finds herself in instead of wasting time questioning reality and her sanity. Goblins exist? OK. Best save that baby from being eaten, then.

I also enjoyed Gatwa's Doctor; I liked him well enough in "The Giggle", but wasn't altogether convinced yet that he hit the right Doctor-y notes. Here, he nailed both the enthusiasm, the wish to know more about everything and the serious, heartfelt moments.

Davies is back, and can write up a storm when he wants to. Murray Gold is back, and his music is excellent throughout. Gatwa and Gibson have both made a great first impression. Of course I'm still onboard for series fourteen, or season one as it will be called on Disney +. Let's just hope I can stomach the political bits.

Fuzzy feelgood fare for anglophiles

Looking for an unambitious subject for a pre-travel, pre-Christmas blog post, I decided to pick one of those "I really should give that a watch some day" films from one of my streaming services, watch it and then write something about it. There were a few options: underperforming, gritty versions of the Robin Hood and King Arthur legends respectively (theme: is grittiness really a good idea here?); a soupy Netflix Christmas romcom (theme: soupy Netflix Christmas romcoms); or the first Paddington film (theme: ideal for anglophiles?). Somehow, I ended up plumping for Paddington.

The story is simple. The titular cute bear makes his way to London from Darkest Peru after the death of his uncle (his aunt holes up in a retirement home for bears, which mercifully does exist and isn't a fib just to get her nephew to seize his chance). Years earlier, before the young bear was born, his aunt and uncle – who belong to an unusually intelligent type of bear – ran into and bonded with an explorer from England, which is why the aunt fondly imagines that a home can be found there. 

The young bear finds London a lot less welcoming than he thought, but manages to get a room for the night with the Brown family, who give him the name Paddington after the station where he was found. Paddington, though well-spoken, is accident-prone, and Mr Brown is adamant that he can't stay, so Paddington tries to find the explorer who once visited his family and make a home with him. Mrs Brown is Paddington's kind-hearted champion, he eventually bonds with the children, and well, you can guess the rest.

The first half-hour or so, I wondered if I had made the wrong choice. Of course this is a children's film, but the plot is very standard nevertheless. Also, there's a lot of slapstick, something I didn't really care for even as a kid (at least not in live action), and even less now as a fuddy-duddy adult. When Paddington uses two of the family's toothbrushes to clean his ears, before flooding the bathroom, I shuddered and wished I had gone for the Christmas romcom instead.

What's not simply standard, though, is the script. From the start, a quirky humour shines through, like when the explorer names one of the bears after his beloved mother – and the other after a boxer he met in a bar. There are a lot of nice details like that. Another early example is when the competitively minded daughter learns Chinese and one of the stock phrases is: "I'm accused of insider trading. I need a lawyer". 

The visual style is also very attractive: like the film as a whole, it aims for whimsical charm and succeeds. The doll's house in the Browns' attic becomes an overview of their house as Paddington writes about them to his aunt; later, the camera swoops in on the toy train of antiques dealer Mr Gruber and shows a scene from his childhood when, as one of the children of the Kindertransport, he was met in England by a stiff female relative. "My body had travelled fast", sighs Gruber, played by kindly-eccentric-man expert Jim Broadbent, "my heart took a little longer". It was about at this point in the film that I decided I enjoyed it after all.

This scene is an example of two other of the film's virtues: that it's stuffed to the gills with solid acting talent, and that it can be heartfelt when it needs to be. But it's the wit and the inventive takes on classic comic set pieces I enjoyed the most. Two bored security guards while away the time by guessing the content description of their packet of biscuits, taking a genuine interest in the amount of sugar and other ingredients. Mr Brown, disguised as a cleaning lady, catches the fancy of a guard – so far, so familiar. But then the situation gets increasingly surreal as Mr Brown tries to explain the discrepancies between himself and the cleaning lady's photo id (she clearly looks like a real menace).

Hugh Bonneville is a reliable comic foil to Paddington as Mr Brown and Sally Hawkins a charming Mrs Brown, but it's often the side characters who steal the show rather than the Brown family or even cute Ben Whishaw-voiced Paddington himself. I'll certainly check out Paddington 2 at leisure, but with an awareness that I need to get in touch with my inner twelve-year-old in order to truly appreciate it.

Half-way through The Gilded Age season two: many Chekhovian guns not fired

When it comes to TV, I'm in a funny situation from a blog perspective. It's not that there aren't a lot of shows on that I'm interested in; it's just that we're in the middle of them, and I'd prefer to finish them before giving an opinion. The jury's still out on both The Crown season six and the Doctor Who specials (of which only one has aired so far) for different reasons. I'm still not sure what I think of The Crown, and am hoping the six remaining episodes will help me make up my mind. As for Doctor Who, if I review "The Star Beast" now, I risk overemphasising my complaints and forgetting about the good stuff, which includes the wonder of being able to watch the show on telly, at the same time as the UK. I'm hoping the remaining two specials will blow me away and make me more thankful.

So a mid-season report of The Gilded Age it is. Not that I'm certain of what my final verdict will be here either. I can only say so far, so good; however, it's still not a patch on Downton.

This is starting to be a problem, as it's the second season, and we should be past the awkwardness of the show setting out its stall. I think the second season of Downton was my favourite one, in spite of it being set during World War I (I'm not too fond of the World Wars as period-drama settings). So why is The Gilded Age, in spite of being entertaining and the best costume drama we've had in a while, not able to hit the same heights?

From a plot perspective, the show is suffering somewhat from late-Downtonitis. Remember how, in the later series of Downton, some storylines were spun out way too long because they constituted certain characters' "arc" for that particular series? The Green murder investigation comes to mind, as does Thomas (uncharacteristically, in my view) trying to medicate himself straight. (That last one didn't take the whole series, but it felt like it.) There's quite a lot of that sort of plotting in The Gilded Age. Mrs Russell is getting involved in the New York "opera wars". Mr Russell is facing strikes and disgruntled workers. Marian is being mildly courted by an eligible widower. And this, it seems, is what they will be doing all season.

These storylines are left simmering, with a desultory mention here and there, without ever really coming to the boil. I can better face the romances moving slowly than, say, the opera plot, which isn't very thrilling to begin with. But I'd prefer a faster pace all round, where the same character could be involved in more than one major occurrence per season. Just look at how comparatively action-packed Downton series two, episode two was. Both Edith and Thomas loved and lost during the episode, and that was far from all that was going on. Afterwards, Fellowes found new things for them to do. No need to dwell on love interests that aren't going to lead anywhere.

A reason for the drawn-out plot threads is, I suspect, that the show has too many characters to juggle. We have the Brook/Van Rhijn household, the Russell household, and Peggy and her parents. It's a lot, especially as both the Russells and Agnes Van Rhijn keep an impressive number of servants. The result is that many of the characters are still pretty sketchy, and I have a problem even remembering their names. You can see that it would be quite a challenge to furnish them with more than one seasonal story arc per head.

Another problem is that two of the characters that get the most screen time – Bertha Russell and Agnes Van Rhijn – are so hard to feel anything for. I still don't understand what's behind Bertha's social ambitions, and I would much rather get some real insight into Agnes's psyche than hear any more of her Dowager Countess-isms. Last season she was at least a good employer to Peggy, but this season she's just stuffy and awful, apparently without reason. We need some introspective scenes with these ladies fast, or we'll never know why their sister and husband respectively bother with them.

Having said that, other characters and plot lines are more of a success. George Russell is still a cynical delight. Ada Brook is lovely, and I found her autumnal love affair so engaging I basically spent one episode holding my breath fearing that Agnes would spoil it. I'm intrigued to see what happens with disgraced businessman-turned-valet Watson, and how Peggy will disentangle herself from her budding romance with a married man. I can watch Oscar fortune-hunting unsuspecting (or maybe not) heiresses all day. And while the servants of both households haven't had a lot of juicy drama coming their way so far, I do like them and hope that better things will be waiting just around the corner.

I also sort of admire Fellowes's disregard for the "Chekhov's gun" principle, which – sorry, Chekhov – I find to be an overrated piece of storytelling advice. How predictable wouldn't stories be if a gun introduced in act one were always to be fired in act three? Fellowes doesn't scruple to introduce a lot of false trails, as he did in Downton. Oscar's ex-lover simply gave up wooing Gladys Russell out of spite. Peggy's child died, so she won't be hunting for him the whole season. Her visit to the South might, after the foreshadowing of her worried mother's warnings, end up with her witnessing the lynching of one of the bright young people she has optimistically interviewed. Or it might not. Julian Fellowes keeps us on our toes and makes life difficult for people like me who enjoy making predictions.

The latest episode, where Fellowes actually lets a momentous change take place for one of the main characters mid-season, leaves me to hope that the drama will soon pick up the pace. Meanwhile, it is still an enjoyable stroll.

Villain redemption and free will: of course I like Loki season two!

Oh joy, Loki stuck the landing! While I'm not quite as invested in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as in, say, Star Wars – I'm fairly new to it after all – it's always a relief nowadays when an MCU project does well and wins the approval of its far from uncritical fanbase. Not to mention that it's great to be able to enjoy the project in question myself without too many quibbles coming in the way.

On balance, I think I liked season two of Loki even more than season one. I had a good time with season one, but I was still adjusting to the fact that Loki wasn't really able to flex his villainous muscles in his own TV series. Also, the over-complicated set-up of the series bothered me, and I wasn't completely won over either by Loki's love interest and alter ego Sylvie or the TVA setting. In season two, we have the set-up out of the way, and though a lot of the storytelling is still labyrinthine, its complications are more enjoyable.

Now we have Loki's whole character arc, it makes more sense to me and increases my appreciation of season one as well. What we saw in season one was Loki's change from a villain to an anti-hero. What we see in season two is his change from an anti-hero to a hero.

Whoa, you might say. Isn't the whole point of Loki that he's a villain? When the shady TVA Hunter X-05 tells him: "Stop trying to be a hero, man! You're a villain. You're good at it. Do that", I for one thought he had a point. However, when push comes to shove, I'm a sucker for a good villain-redemption story, if only it's done right. Loki, ultimately, pulled it off.

I was irritated in season one by the apparent attempt to cram several films' worth of character development into one episode, as Loki was treated to a whistle-stop tour of how the rest of his life would have played out if he hadn't diverged from the "sacred timeline". But I can live with it now as this was only the start of his long and bumpy road to redemption. He made friends with Mobius, but it didn't end there. He fell in love with Sylvie, but it didn't end there. He realised he cared more about her than about ultimate power, but it didn't end there. Season two started with him working apparently selflessly to save the TVA and potentially all of existence, but we still weren't done with the character development stuff.

While the first episodes of season two reminded me of Doctor Who with its time-jumping quirkiness – the lovable engineer and overall fixer Ouroboros (O.B. for short) is in many ways a typical Doctor Who character – the final episode gave me Once Upon A Time vibes, and from me you can't expect higher praise than that. If you'd explain the plot to an old Viking, you'd get the same head-scratching response as if you'd explain the gist of Once to the Brothers Grimm: "Excuse me, who did you say saved the day again?" 

Loki made his final sacrifice in exactly the right way for a redeemed villain: not proudly or self-righteously as a hero might, but resignedly, after having tried everything else. He had a personal stake, rather than acting for an abstract Good of All Mankind. At the same time, he wanted to save not just Sylvie, but a whole group of friends. In the villain-redemption game, sacrificing yourself for a family member or love interest is all fine and good, but sacrificing yourself for someone you don't have to care for yet still do hits harder.

As a Scandinavian, I appreciated the nod towards mythological Loki too. MCU Loki's fate was a great deal less grim – it's not as if he ended tied up in his son's guts with poison dripping on his head, like his wicked inspiration. Nevertheless, he is stuck, and the day he becomes unstuck the world supposedly faces its Ragnarök. Very neat.

Of course, I had some quibbles too. Making Loki so overpowered adds to the ongoing confusion about MCU "gods": I mean, I like the guy, but a Messiah he ain't. Season two dropped the ball badly when it came to the relationship between Loki and Sylvie. Not only is there no discernible romantic chemistry between them any more: she seems angry with him for some reason, though she was the one who betrayed him at the end of season one, a betrayal he never confronts her about. Still Sylvie serves a function as the uncompromising advocate of free will, and I can't but applaud that her outlook won out in the end. The Multiverse may have turned out to be tricky to integrate into good storytelling, but I'm happy that it's still around.

Regicides on the run

"I was wondering how a man who wished to do right could act so unjustly and unwisely as Charles the First sometimes did [...] Still, I like Charles – I respect him – I pity him, poor murdered king! Yes, his enemies were the worst: they shed blood they had no right to shed. How dared they kill him!"

Thus Helen Burns in Jane Eyre. When it comes to Charles I of England, I have been raised in the Helen Burns school of thought, and have had little cause to doubt it. It does seem as if poor Charles's main crime was losing the Civil War, which was no reason for the victors to lop his head off. He can't very well be expected to be in favour of deposing himself. 

At the same time, I have sometimes wondered if I'm being a hypocrite. I don't object to the lopping off of a monarch's head in principle, after all, if he is actually guilty of a crime. I have zero problems with the execution of Louis XVI of France approximately 150 years later (because he committed treason – me fancying one of the regicides has nothing to do with it). Which raises the question: could any case be made for Charles I having committed treason? What did treason (in political terms) even mean in the 17th century? When did the meaning shift from "treason against your ruler" to "treason against your country and your people"?

So it was with some interest I learned that Robert Harris's (him again? I'm afraid so) historical novel Act of Oblivion would be dealing with the escape of two of Charles's killers, and the attempts made during the Restoration to track them down and despatch them in their turn. Maybe this was a chance to learn more about the rationale behind the decision to execute the king?

It turns out the book has little to say about this particular question for a good two thirds of its respectable length. It's still a gripping read, though, for the most part anyway. There is built-in tension in a man hunt, and the based-on-fact circumstances of this one are exciting enough. The two regicides in question, both willing signees of Charles I's death warrant, are Colonel Edward Whalley and his son-in-law William Goffe, aka Ned and Will. They escape all the way to America, and as they start to build a modest life there you'd think they'd be pretty safe. Turns out they're not.

The significance of the North American colonies still being under English rule slowly dawns on the reader. The Governor of Massachusetts may be a Roundhead through and through: in the end, when faced with a direct order from the King, he must obey it or face consequences for the whole colony. And so the fugitives move from one safe-seeming hideout to another, doggedly pursued by Royalists. It's thrilling stuff, as soon as the chase is on, especially if like me you have no idea of how it's going to end.

But there is one slight problem for a Helen Burnsian like myself. It is somehow natural to root for men who are being hunted, and the two regicides are quite likeable, so yes, I was rather hoping they wouldn't get caught. At the same time, they're not a pair of Jean Valjeans. They did kill the king, and though Ned eventually comes to question the decision (I suspect it's Harris who's doing most of the questioning on his behalf; it would surprise me if the real Edward Whalley had many qualms), the doubt is a long time coming. Will never has any doubts at all. So they will just have to face up to the consequences, won't they? They can't be surprised that Charles II isn't prepared to forgive his pa's killers just like that. What did they think would happen?

At  the same time, the fictional leader of the man hunt against them, Richard Nayler, is hard to have much sympathy for. At first I wasn't sure that Nayler being a bit of a pill was intentional. After all, I have found more than one of Harris's heroes to be pills. As the story progresses, though, it becomes pretty clear that Nayler's the bad guy. Harris does give him a strong, albeit contrived, motive for wanting to – well – nail Whalley and Goffe (Cromwell's infamous banning of worship on Christmas Day comes into it), and he's not beyond reason. He's not too thrilled about digging up and executing already dead regicides, for instance (Cromwell and two others). Nevertheless, enough should be enough. I'm not sure the personal motive was such a good idea on Harris's part, either; it would have been more interesting if Nayler had been carried by Royalist convictions alone.

The novel, as one expects from Harris, is well and vividly written, and he writes skilfully about the "down times" in the hunt as well. But the book is a little on the long side for my liking, and some of the hiding-out descriptions could possibly have been cut to tighten it up. I was torn about Whalley writing his memoirs while hiding: it did give me some of the background for the decision to execute Charles I that I was initially looking for, but at the same time it slowed down the narrative. 

Also, while I applaud Harris's attempts to get into the religious mind sets of his protagonists – otherwise, it's a common fault in modern historical novels that the characters lose their faith far too easily, so the author doesn't have to deal with a piety they don't understand – I didn't always find it convincing. Better that, though, than Nayler's increasing atheism, which doesn't make much sense seeing as he is so outraged by the very idea of beheading a King. (Why is that so terrible if the King isn't God's anointed? Nayler doesn't seem to have had any personal relationship to Charles.) All in all, Harris has a better hand with the historical figures than the fictional one, though it's clear he prefers Ned to Will.

This isn't my favourite historical novel by Harris, but it's still good; I've found myself missing the New England atmosphere after having finished the book. It's no mean feat to make me sympathise with two Puritan regicides, while at the same time remaining convinced that I would have hated living in Oliver Cromwell's England.

Ahsoka: Enjoyable viewing for Star Wars nerds (not sure about the rest)

So, yeah, I liked Ahsoka. But be warned, I'm not exactly the most critical of Star Wars fans. Hey, I even liked Obi-Wan Kenobi.

I've come to realise that when it comes to Star Wars shows, I'm a complete pushover. You can put anything in front of me TV-wise and I'll gulp it down, as long as it's linked to the good old galaxy far, far away. The same pretty much goes for the movies, with Solo being a possible exception (and I do think that Rogue One has been over-hyped in the wake of Andor). It's a bit troubling to be so undiscerning – Star Wars is, after all, only my second favourite sci-fi franchise after Doctor Who – but at least I have fun. 

I do, however, completely understand if true Star Wars fans – the fine diners to my burger gobbler – tend to be less easy to win over. Overall, I have the impression that they had a good time with Ahsoka, but were disappointed that the series didn't deliver more on the promising scenarios it set up (a feeling I as a die-hard Once Upon A Time fan can relate to). As in Once, it's a question of letting go of all the cool concepts that were never properly explored and instead trying to appreciate the things we actually got.

However, what the average Star Wars movie viewer makes of this show, I have absolutely no idea.

This bothered me. The franchise isn't in such a great shape that it can risk alienating "casual" fans – if by "casual" you mean fans who have watched all three trilogies of the Skywalker saga, plus Rogue One and Solo too. Because you can do all that, and still not have the faintest idea who Ahsoka is.

The Ahsoka mini-series prominently features characters from the two animated shows Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels but, unlike characters like Bo-Katan in The Mandalorian, they're not properly re-introduced, in a way as to give you a good grasp of them even if you haven't watched the animated stuff. I got the strong feeling that we're already supposed to know the story of Sabine Wren, Ezra Bridger, Hera Syndulla, Grand Admiral Thrawn and – last but not least – Ahsoka herself when going into Ahsoka. And I did, so there was no problem for me. But Clone Wars and Rebels shouldn't be required viewing for a live-action series such as this one. It should be able to function independently, and ideally make its characters so interesting that viewers will be curious to learn more about them in the animated shows.

Even if you knew everything Clone Wars and Rebels could teach you about the characters, though, character development wasn't this show's strong suit, and in this it reflects a common gripe with me when it comes to Star Wars content: the reluctance to explore relationships. The franchise's large male fanbase may be a factor here. Guys are rightly or wrongly supposed not to be interested in too much relationship-focused drama, especially if the relationships in question are of a romantic nature (and admittedly, the most disdainful dismissals of "shipping" do tend to come from male commentators). 

Whatever the reason, we get a couple of surrogate parent-child relationships and some pat-each-other-on-the-back camaraderie in Star Wars, but otherwise attachments are avoided in a way that would make any member of the Jedi Council proud. It's a wonder that anyone besides Anakin and Padmé and Han and Leia procreates at all. 

In Ahsoka, the exact nature of Sabine's feelings for Ezra – for whose sake she makes a momentous and un-Jedi-like decision (I'm all for it) – is never fully explained. But even putting romance aside, we don't get a clear idea of what the characters actually think of each other. What's the deal with Ahsoka and Sabine? Or with Morgan Elsbeth and Grand Admiral Thrawn? Or with Baylan Skoll, a fallen Jedi looking for a new creed to follow beyond the Jedi and the Sith, and his power-hungry apprentice Shin Hati? I want to know!

What the series does have, though, is plenty of atmosphere, some heartwarming nostalgia, a fun droid voiced by David Tennant and potential to develop further if there's a series two. Ray Stevenson, who played arguably the most interesting character (Baylan), tragically passed away after the series was completed, but hopefully there's still room to explore his quest (recasting, maybe? It will be tough as Stevenson was seriously good). Then there's Shin, dubbed "Shin Hottie" by the fans, who's a far more fun bad-girl Force wielder than the aggrieved Reva in Obi-Wan Kenobi. I wouldn't mind seeing more battles between her and Ahsoka and Sabine, and maybe even a temporary, easily fractured team-up.

I'm still not convinced by Grand Admiral Thrawn as the next Big Bad in Star Wars, though. I'm sure he was great in the books the serious fans keep referring to, but here as in Rebels, he leans far to heavily into the "Ah, just as I anticipated" kind of villainy. But I appreciate Lars Mikkelsen as an actor, and there's still time to make the blue guy work for me.

OK, I admit it, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is pretty great

A few years back, I was gloating because I believed that Illumination, the studio that came up with the annoying Minions, had got their hands on Disney's angriest competitor DreamWorks. It seems the reality is more complicated: the two animation studios now have the same parent company, but they remain separate. So, spoke too soon, and too uninformedly. What's more, any input DreamWorks may have got from Illumination doesn't seem to have harmed them in the least, quite the contrary.

I really didn't expect to like Puss in Boots: The Last Wish for a number of reasons. One, it's the sequel to a spinoff which was quite decent but didn't beg to be followed up. Two, it is, albeit tangentially, part of the Shrek franchise, which is the main reason I have a lingering scepticism towards DreamWorks in the first place, in spite of really enjoying many of their films. The Shrek films' ambition to "deconstruct fairy tales" is so clearly aimed at the Disney versions of said tales that it becomes embarrassing, and there's a mean streak running through them that I know many people appreciate but I kinda hate. 

Three, the theme of The Last Wish, as praised by a number of critics online, didn't seem to be ideally suited for a family film. It appeared to centre to an alarming degree on confronting and accepting your mortality. That may be an interesting topic for grown-up critics, but what about the kids, a not unimportant target audience? If anyone should be allowed to not to have the inevitability of death rubbed in their faces, surely it should be children.

But, I have to admit defeat. I was won over. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is vivaciously animated, cleverly plotted, and has engaging characters. Yes, the "value your life" message is in there, but it's not what everything's about. Puss isn't the only one who may come to realise that he already has what he needs, "no magic required". The last wish of a fallen star, which he and many others seek, becomes a useful MacGuffin in order to highlight this theme. The way the map to the star changes, and the terrain and its challenges with it, depending on who uses it, was a great detail, inventive and unironically fairy-taleish.

The villains are also particularly strong. There's the dead-serious one (literally), a scary wolf in a hood, armed with two sickles, whom Puss meets in a tavern while drowning his sorrows in cream when he's found out he's on the last of his nine lives. Puss thinks he's a bounty hunter at first. He's not.

Then there's the potentially redeemable antagonist Goldilocks and her bears, a band of small-time crooks (as signalled by their far-from-posh English accents). I really liked the take on the Goldilocks story here: in this version, the bears adopt the orphan girl, fondly imagining that she's part of their family now. Goldi is not so sure.

Lastly, there's a more traditional Shrek-type villain, Big Jack Horner, who is Little Jack Horner grown up to a far from good boy. He's traditional in that he is a comic villain, but also (as the best ones of the Shrek villain bunch) a lethal and ruthless one. The big difference to the Shrek films is that the protagonists respect him and take him seriously. "Oh no, not Jack Horner" Puss exclaims in dismay when he learns who has the map. "That's why you don't mess with Jack Horner", Puss's sometime partner and love interest Kitty comments later, grimly. This approach makes the comic elements of Horner funnier than if he'd been the endless butt of Shrek jokes. At the same time, the cats are right to fear him.

Jack Horner also serves a useful purpose as a dark-humour-magnet. There are Shrek-type jokes of the too-harsh-for-a-Disney-flick kind in this film, but as they're mostly connected to Horner and his actions they're far easier to take than if Puss & Co. had behaved with casual cruelty (as Shrek and Fiona sometimes did). Whether they're heroes or anti-heroes, I prefer protagonists I'm supposed to root for to steer clear of meanness and pettiness. Villains, now, that's a completely different matter.

The one good thing about Disney's Peter Pan & Wendy (to be fair, it's Hook)

You've got to hand it to Peter Pan & Wendy, the live-action Disney remake very few people talk about. It answers the interesting question whether a Peter Pan adaptation with a good Hook can still be bad. The answer, unfortunately, is yes.

There are just too many things that don't work. Neverland doesn't look particularly magical. Peter himself is somewhat muted, and doesn't come across as a charismatic leader. Wendy's never swept away by him; you can certainly allow yourself to have a bit of conflict between Peter and Wendy, but she has to be into him before she starts to question him. I try to disregard the display of modern pieties in light entertainment to some extent, because otherwise I'd have practically no light entertainment to enjoy. But Peter Pan & Wendy parades its 2020s moralism so blatantly that it hurts the story and is impossible to ignore.

For instance, we really don't need a girl quota of "lost boys". J.M. Barrie actually offered an explanation as to why there weren't any lost girls: the lost boys were babies who fell out of their prams, and little girls weren't foolish enough to do that. Which, yes, is a bit patronising, but not more so than a scene where Wendy points out "But you're not all boys", only to be answered with an aggressive "So?" Call them lost children if necessary, but for my money being a lost boy, trailing after Peter Pan and following his orders, isn't that much of a privilege – we needn't covet it. There are still plenty of female characters in Neverland: Wendy, Tinkerbell, Tiger Lily, the mermaids (plus, I must reluctantly point out, the crocodile was actually female in the original story). I don't mind a couple of women pirates, though, and a multicultural bunch of lost boys is fine; it's easy to imagine that Peter's recruitment field was wider than the British Isles (and I'm not sure I buy the pram story, seeing how he lured away the Darling siblings).

Speaking of Tinkerbell and Tiger Lily, they are also victims of the filmmakers' good intentions (or moral vanity, take your pick). Tinkerbell can be black, no problem – it was Disney themselves who popularised the blond pigtail look, they're free to change it – but she still has to be recognisably Tinkerbellish: temperamental, jealous of Wendy and sometimes a downright menace. But the film doesn't have the bottle to make an ethnicity-changed Tink a flawed character, so she ends up bland, friendly with Wendy and not noticeably in love with Peter. As for Tiger Lily, I could buy her having big-sisterly feelings for Peter, but otherwise, she's not allowed to have a personality either: she's just wise and, of course, good at fighting.

But, yeah, Jude Law's Hook was good.            

Not that the pirate side of things was flawlessly handled either. The pirates of Neverland aren't meant to resemble any real pirates that ever lived: they're supposed to be the kind of pirates children imagine when they're playing. Having a gritty-looking, greasy-haired Hook instead of the usual glamorous swashbuckler is misunderstanding the source material. For all that, Law plays Hook with an inner melancholy disguised by bravado I think Barrie would have approved of. And I like the sea shanties.

I have some sympathy for the film's attempts to focus on the part of the story I happen to find most fascinating as well: the relationship between Peter Pan and Hook. Here as in so many other versions of the tale, they started out as friends before the friendship went sour. They are also more dependent on each other than they like to admit. When the film revolves around this relationship, I actually found it interesting with even a couple of touching moments.

The problem is that the film is called Peter Pan & Wendy, not Peter Pan & Hook or simply Hook (Spielberg beat Disney to that one). It's supposed to be an adaptation of the classic story, not a left-field take on it. The main plot, though, is told in a perfunctory manner. I can relate to finding Hook's character more intriguing than Peter Pan's, but if that's the way you feel, then maybe you shouldn't do a film based on Barrie's book and play, but rather a prequel or retelling. In the original Peter Pan and Wendy, whatever one may think of Peter Pan, he's very much the hero of his own life.

Is the High Evolutionary a good villain?

My opinions on Marvel's Phase Five so far have been crushingly unoriginal. I did think I'd like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania more than the average viewer because the criticism I heard of it – about tonal shifts, too much "Marvel humour" and not "doing justice" to a villain (Modok) who seemed a pretty goofy concept to begin with – weren't things I believed I'd mind that much. It turns out I was possibly even more disappointed with Quantumania than the average viewer. 

I hated what they did with Cassie, who went from Scott's supportive daughter to annoying Millennial, full of platitudes like "Only because it's not happening to you doesn't mean it's not happening". She also has the gall to be disappointed in her world-saving father because he doesn't provoke policemen during demonstrations for the homeless (because that'll help). The jokes didn't land with me: in fact, I think I actually enjoyed Thor: Love and Thunder more. Kang the Conqueror was a solid head villain, though.

Then Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 came out, and everyone loved it. I saw it once it streamed on Disney + (I can't face waiting an eternity for Marvel's post-credit scenes in the cinema, and consequently I wait for streaming and am always behind when it comes to the movies). And guess what: I loved it too, or at least really liked it. So what kind of "take" can I come up with that isn't too drearily familiar?

Perhaps the perspective of a villain-lover? There has been some talk about the High Evolutionary in Guardians 3 being such an good villain, in fact better than Kang, the MCU's present Big Bad. It's got me thinking about the different things people seem to want from their villains.

Now, don't get me wrong, the High Evolutionary is a highly effective villain. He does exactly what is required of him by the plot, i.e. he makes the viewers hate him. Chukwudi Iwuji puts in a great performance; I heard one reviewer complaining that he shouted too much, but for my part I thought he balanced the quiet and the more histrionic moments perfectly. The High Evolutionary only loses it when he thinks he's achieved his dream of creating a being with original thought, but is terrified that the discovery will slip through his fingers. Guardians 3 manages to integrate intriguing philosophical questions – this time about what makes the "perfect" being, and whether it is worthwhile striving to create one (answer: no) – into high entertainment much better than Thor: Love and Thunder did.

So what's the problem, then? There's none, really, except for villain-lovers like me. I adhere to the maxim of Stephanie Garber's Donatella, that the best villains are the ones you secretly like (or, in my case, not so secretly drool over). The High Evolutionary is not that kind of villain. He's designed to be loathsome. If his experiments on animals and children (yes, the movie is manipulative, but trust me, it works) don't achieve the desired effect, his calculated meanness towards Rocket, whose "enhanced" brain is ostensibly the High Evolutionary's greatest work, and his callous scrapping of whole planets of creatures who don't live up to his vision will. And if that's what you want – a thoroughly boo-and-hissable bad guy – then they don't come much better than the jerk whose hubris even manages to alienate his own followers in the end.

This is probably exactly what many people want from a villain. In years past, I've been delighted to discover that the villain-loving community is much bigger than I imagined. But it only stands to reason that not everyone likes to gush over bad guys. Even I, for a change, can enjoy a story where I whole-heartedly root for the good guys and want their enemy foiled, like in Guardians 3. Some people, I guess, prefer this formula over one where you're tricked into feeling some sort of sympathy with the villain.

Is the High Evolutionary a better villain than Kang? I don't think it's possible to say yet, because the MCU isn't done with Kang. It would be the same as to judge Thanos as a villain before Avengers: Infinity War. But although Jonathan Majors did an impressive job as Kang the Conqueror in Quantumania (and yes, it will prove a challenge if Marvel has to replace him, but that's another story), Kang as a character in that particular movie does perhaps lose out in effectiveness compared to the High Evolutionary. Kang is, after all, taken out by ants, albeit giant, highly intelligent ones. Still, I'm happy that Kang is the Big Bad we're going to see more of: he's potentially more complex than the High Evolutionary which, let's face it, isn't hard.

Historical novels not set in Tudor or Victorian times

Although I've read quite a respectable number of books lately (if not nearly as many as I've bought), blogging about them is another matter. I confess that unless there is some book-related theme I'm burning to comment on, writing about geeky stuff is considerably easier. However, I realise that a book-themed blog post is well overdue.

Perhaps my lack of enthusiasm for book-blogging says something about the novels I've been reading. They've been good, sure, but they haven't made an overwhelming impression on me. I haven't discovered a new favourite author, but I've had a good time. Take The Clockwork Girl by Anna Mazzola, a historical novel set in Paris in the 1750s. Once in a while, I like to read historical novels set in times and places I am less familiar with. For one thing, it's exciting not to know beforehand how things pan out, and you learn something new, even if you have to take anything you pick up from a historical novel with a pinch of salt. The 1750s is a period of French history I don't know much about, so I was interested in the setting from the start.

The plot concerns Madeleine, the scarred daughter of a brothel keeper, who is tasked with spying on a clockmaker called Reinhart and his household. He is considered for a position at court, but there are rumours about unnatural experiments, and the question is if he's quite safe to be let near the royal presence. Madeleine is reluctant to become a police spy, but the reward she is promised could help her and her beloved nephew escape life at the brothel. She becomes the maid of Reinhart's daughter Veronique, and the novel is told alternately from the points of view of Madeleine and Veronique, sometimes with a section told from the point of view of Jeanne (Madame de Pompadour, no less) thrown in.

It's an intriguing story, where the setup reminded me a little of Fingersmith without the lesbian romance – Veronique isn't quite as innocent as she seems. Although the novel focuses a great deal on female solidarity, the mystery that kept me hooked concerned Reinhart. I was happy to be kept guessing about him. Does he have sinister intentions or is he just a committed scientist? Does he care about his daughter or not? It's a well-spun yarn, and clearly well-researched. There's a lot of local colour – a little too much for my taste – and the descriptions are filtered through the characters' consciousness, which always adds interest.

The characters seemed less authentic than the settings to me, though. I frequently felt the presence of 21th-century tut-tutting. Wasn't it awful that there was such a divide between rich and poor? And that women's lives were so limited? And then there was slavery too! (Reinhart's footman Joseph is a former slave, the "former" very much depending on the goodwill of his master.) The female protagonists felt less like 18th-century women than modern women stuck in 18th-century lives and hating it. Even Madame de Pompadour, who's at the top of the tree, is full of gloom.

It's hard to justify why the protagonists' lamentations irritated me so much. Of course the poor resented the rich in the 18th century, and gifted women must often have wondered why they were prohibited from earning their own bread. Many people found slavery appalling, because it was appalling. Only, I think 18th-century people approached these questions from a different angle, and if they expressed similar sentiments to modern ones they did so in a different way. I would have enjoyed the novel more if it had either dialled down the commentary or made more of an effort to make it feel genuinely 18th-century.

Kate Atkinson wisely stays away from social commentary in Shrines of Gaiety, a novel set in London in 1926 which focuses on hard-bitten nightclub owner Nellie Coker and her large family. I wasn't a great fan of Atkinson's One Good Turn, which is the only other novel I've read by her, so I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the glamorous if potentially dangerous nightclub settings and the expert juggling of several plot threads and characters. There's no downright moralising, mercifully, more wry commenting which reminded me of Fay Weldon's "Love and Inheritance" trilogy.

The ending, though it could have been more tragic, still feels a little downbeat, and it is somehow typical that the author leaves an open ending for one potential romance (which leads me to assume that everything went swimmingly, as I suspect that Atkinson wouldn't have held back from telling us if it all went to pot). But all in all, I liked Shrines of Gaiety. If the Coker family saga had been further expanded upon, it would have made for a good costume drama series of, say, ten episodes. I mean that as praise, though I'm not sure it's the kind of praise Kate Atkinson would appreciate.

Not even the shapeshifting is fun in this Zygon – sorry, Skrull – invasion

At the beginning of the latest Marvel Disney + series Secret Invasion, I thought I'd have a hot take on it – while others called it "promising", I thought it was dull. At the end of the series, however, I'm far from the only one to be critical. 

The set-up of the series first. Nick Fury, the grizzled head of superhero-related intelligence, is called back to Earth from a mission in space. Back in the Nineties, he and Carol Danvers (aka Captain Marvel) promised to find a new planet for a fugitive alien species called Skrulls, whose most prominent feature is their ability to shapeshift. Thirty-odd years later, nothing has happened on the planet-finding front, and the Skrulls are getting restless. Some of them are beginning to wonder whether Earth wouldn't make a decent new home – once you get rid of all the pesky humans.

You could see how things could get interesting from such a premise. Now after the show has aired, however, there are far-from-glowing reviews all over containing observations with which I concur, such as:

- There's no in-universe reason for not calling in the Avengers. Nick Fury's insistence on handling the situation himself (with the help from a few friendly Skrulls), just because he wants to clean up what he considers to be his mess, looks dangerously pig-headed. The Earth's future is on the line here.

- The motivation of the villain, Skrull leader Gravik, makes no sense. I'd argue it's quite a leap from feeling angry with Fury to wanting to destroy the whole human race. Gravik isn't four years old. Why is he basically going "you promised, and now I'm gonna kill you all"? Plus his railing over the kills he did as Fury's secret agent rings hollow considering all the non-ordered murders he's done since, including some spectacularly stupid ones of his own kind.

- No-one's plan makes any sense. Not Gravik's, not Fury's, not Fury's best Skrull bud Talos's. Everyone's acting aimlessly and idiotically. This is a serious flaw in a thriller, which needs to be slick and smart.

- Why is it so hard to find a planet for the Skrulls? The MCU seems to be full of perfectly habitable planets. And what has Captain Marvel, who considered herself too fancy to help out in human affairs for decades, been doing with her time?

- Why is it so hard to integrate the Skrulls? Fury is appalled to learn that there were as many as a million of them originally. But even allowing for some population growth, that's not an awful lot compared to billions of humans. You could easily tuck all of Skrull-dom away in one admittedly large city somewhere, or spread them out. Even without a shape-shifting disguise they're not that scary-looking, and MCU humans have seen a lot of strange things by now.

- The series makes Fury look bad. He's supposed to be the classic Broken Hero who finds his mojo again – during the first episode, people are continually telling him he's past it – but he never quite does. He's also made to look caddish because he prefers his Skrull wife, Varra, to wear a (very attractive) human disguise, rather than be her green, ridgy, elf-eared and pointy-toothed self. My own main problem with this is that Varra's shapeshifting was her own idea; she purposefully sought out a woman she knew Fury would like the look of, who was conveniently dying, and asked her permission to take over her life. It's a bit much after that to ask to be loved "for yourself" years later.

- The last episode leaves one character ridiculously overpowered, and seeing as this character has previously been complicit is a mass-murder before seeing the error of their ways (kinda), it doesn't feel earned.

- And, yes, the series is actually pretty boring.

What can I add to all these (in my opinion) well-founded criticisms? A more personal disappointment for me was that the series failed to do something interesting with the whole shapeshifting concept. As someone who has been stagestruck since childhood, I've always been fascinated by the "acting" part of shapeshifting. To what extent do Skrulls who take over a human's appearance and tap into their memories also take over that human's personality? 

In one episode, we saw a Skrull give in to Fury when Fury threatened the son of the human the Skrull was impersonating. How come? It wasn't the Skrull's boy. That would have been worth diving into, but the series never does. Plus, I've always loved scenes where shapeshifters give themselves away by acting "out of character" and doing or saying something the person they're posing as would never do. But Secret Invasion doesn't deal with psychological "tells" at all; Skrulls are revealed in a much more hands-on manner.

Instead of shapeshifting-as-acting-drama, we get yet another clunky immigration metaphor. This was all the more irritating for me because it hit the same beats as the Doctor Who two-parter "The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion", which also featured shape-shifting aliens who had lost their planet. There, as here, there were plenty of peaceful aliens who only wanted to live a normal life. There, as here, a growing dissatisfaction with having to disguise themselves led to some aliens being "radicalised". There, as here, the human originals whom the aliens were impersonating were kept in pods and their memories mined in order to make the impersonations more believable. 

The Zygon two-parter is not a favourite of mine, but I must admit it explored the logistics of trying to integrate a shape-shifting species more thoroughly than Secret Invasion, and it did do more with the "human or alien" premise. But both "The Zygon Invasion/Inversion" and Secret Invasion lack something a shapeshifter story should have if I'm to enjoy it: a bit of fun.       

Pixar's Elemental: strong on romance, weak on allegory

I have similar feelings towards Elemental, Pixar's latest film, as many others (judging mainly from YouTube). On the strength of trailers and movie clips, I wasn't too eager to go to the cinema to watch it, and was tempted to wait until the Disney + release. When I did watch it at the cinema, however, I was pleasantly surprised and had a really good time.

Why wasn't I more excited for the film, then, as I could see from the trailers etc. that the animation would be stunning and colourful? The general impression of the Elemental's premise seems to be "haven't we seen this before?". A world with humanised elements doesn't come across as very innovative from a studio that has already given us humanised toys, bugs, monsters, fish, emotions and more. What bothered me more than a certain staleness in the Pixar formula, though, was the staleness of the themes addressed. Were we really getting "let's overcome prejudice" and generational conflict? Again?

I've seen the "let's overcome prejudice" theme in animated films and elsewhere many, many times. Zootopia (or Zootropolis in Europe, but as I don't know why the title was changed I'll stick to the original one) is the most high-profiled example among the animated flicks, and to be fair I thought it handled the subject matter rather cleverly. More recently, we've had Raya and the Last Dragon and Luca, and apparently Trolls World Tour from Dreamworks (which I haven't seen) tackled the same issues. It's especially popular to use allegories when trying to put the anti-prejudice message across, and while I can appreciate the good intentions behind them, I feel as if I see another clunky metaphor for immigration (looking at you, Marvel's Secret Invasion) I shall scream. I've already expanded on why I especially dislike allegories where humans are the discriminators and the discriminated against are another species of some kind. At least Elemental doesn't go down that road, but still: this has been done.

Generational conflict is the latest favourite topic of animated Disney films, and it sometimes crops up in Pixar too. I'm getting pretty tired of this as well, especially as generational-conflict films tend to be short on villains. Encanto, Strange World, Turning Red and now Elemental all have the younger generation questioning and/or wanting to break free from the older one, and zero villains.

But enough whining (for now). In spite of my misgivings, I very much enjoyed Elemental, which luckily isn't just Zootopia all over again. What I especially liked about the film was the romance. Here we have two protagonists – the prickly fire girl Ember and the somewhat mushy but endearing water guy Wade – unapologetically falling for each other in a classic romcom scenario. When's the last time we got that in an animated film? Seems like ages. And it's not just one of the characters doing all the running, either. Ember and Wade see the point of each other and complement each other: she appreciates his ability to connect to others, he admires her spark and can-do approach. It's really sweet.

The other main story thread, about Ember's parents' experiences as immigrants to "Element City" and how they affect Ember, has its moments too, though for my part I was more into the love story. Ember's sudden realisation that she doesn't really want to take over her father's shop felt as if it surfaced a bit abruptly after we've seen her repeatedly trying to prove to her dad that she's ready to take over. But maybe that's the point: she feels so guilty about not really enjoying shop work that she's suppressed her ambitions.

The main problem with Elemental is that the allegory of elements living together in one city doesn't serve either of these plot threads. Yes, it's visually impressive, and has inspired the animators to a lot of creative character and city designs. But it doesn't really work. However romantic the scene is where Ember and Wade finally dare to touch and manage to do so without destroying each other, you can't help wondering what will happen when they get even more tactile, plus if and how they'll manage to have children. 

As for the immigrant story, its personal approach is both a strength and a weakness. Unlike Zootopia, Elemental isn't about bringing harmony to a whole society; it's just about Ember trying to have a relationship and find a career that fits her talents without upsetting her parents. This makes the film more engaging and less finger-wagging than if it had gone further down the social commentary route. On the other hand, it can't use the same gambit as Zootopia, where there were no one-to-one parallels between different animals in the film and different groups of people in the real world, which lead to more general and less infected musings on the nature of prejudice. But in Elemental, the fire people are immigrants; they've already been established as such within the story. However, the physical danger that water poses to fire, and fire to everything else, has no equivalent in the real world. Elements really don't mix, but humans can. 

I don't think Element City is meant to be a one-to-one parallel to, say, New York (what would that imply about the air and earth people – that there are some immigrants who've had it easy?), but with some real-world parallels being so explicit, Elemental falls between two chairs when it comes to its world building.

Quibbles aside, Elemental is a heartwarming love story and sometimes touching family drama which is beautifully animated. It's definitely worth watching in a cinema. But Pixar does need to look out. In a film like Inside Out, they were really committed to the idea of animating a girl's emotional development by making her emotions into characters of their own. They had fun with the concept, whereas in Elemental, the animated elements are mostly a way to dress up a story that might as well have been told as a live-action romcom featuring humans. If the story and concept don't gel, then maybe one of them has to go.

Filling a Downton-shaped hole: Sanditon series three

Yep, I'm late with my blogging, which should really have taken place last week. My excuses are pre-vacation stress and a complete lack of inspiration. But now the vacation has started, and I have a given subject after having watched the whole series three of Sanditon.

Admittedly, there's not much scope for in-depth analysis (which suits me fine, to be honest), as this remained an enjoyable soufflé of a show throughout. The main difference to series one and two was that this time around, we got a satisfying ending. Series three was the final one, and its creators knew it, so they tied everything up in a pretty bow, something critics hate but viewers like myself love. Much as I've tried to see the point of "dynamic" endings that are more like "real life", few things beat a conclusion to a story which clearly signals that everything will be all right.

And that's not the only thing this show succeeded with. I have an impression, too, that it was popular. In (admittedly anglophile) Sweden it was aired on our main channel in a prime-time Saturday slot, and a common line in conversations with other costume-drama lovers became "you've seen Sanditon, of course". Yanks seemed to have loved it as well. Also, the fact that the show was saved from cancellation and then got two more series demonstrates that it must have done something right.

So, what is its appeal? After all, there is plenty to criticise. It's unashamedly shallow, making Downton Abbey look like Dostoyevsky in comparison, and the characters' mind-set feels more modern than Regency. Charlotte's proto-feminism and "follow your heart" rhetoric, and the respectful way it's received by her swains as priceless pearls of wisdom, strain credibility. Marriages of convenience were very much a way of life, and Georgiana's mother, for instance, would not have any reason to be shocked to learn that her daughter wasn't head over ears in love with her fiancé. Arthur Parker refuses to live in a ménage à trois with Georgiana and said fiancé because he would rather "live alone than live a lie". Well, those are exactly his options. If a gay man in Regency England wanted to get any at all, he had to "live a lie". And a Duke was expected to marry and produce heirs, whatever his inclinations. While I could buy why Arthur was upset that his Harry chose to become engaged to Georgiana of all people, I did wonder what exactly he thought would happen.

But for all the clichés, not to mention the unnecessarily drawn-out romance of Charlotte herself and its idiotic misunderstandings, Sanditon was never dull. The acting was consistently good; the actors played every scene, however melodramatic, perfectly straight. The characters were likeable. While much of the story was predictable, there were a couple of surprises and nice details: the unenlightened judge who nevertheless sees himself obliged to judge Georgiana's case fairly; some nuance added to the rakish Sir Edward's character which kept you guessing whether he was serious about Augusta or not; the vicar's realisation that he disapproves of his sister's autumnal romance with Dr Fuchs, not because Fuchs is too sciency but because he (the vicar) doesn't want to live alone; Harry's mother being perfectly aware of and unfazed by his preferences, but anxious that he should escape the gallows (and preferably secure the family's future by doing so) – these were plot points you couldn't necessarily see coming, and were welcome because of it. 

I should also mention that Arthur's rejection of the ménage à trois plan (which sounded pretty good to me, if Georgiana hadn't had a better suitor waiting in the wings) was given some credibility by his fondness for both Harry and Georgiana. He wasn't just thinking of himself; he was convinced that two people he loved would be unhappy together and didn't want to witness it. Arthur's and Georgiana's friendship was a sweet detail throughout the series, which I thought added to their respective character.

Also, while highlighting the good points of series three, Colbourne's lawyer brother turned out to be hot (and better at shaving than his bro), so there's that.

So, to circle back: why does Sanditon work? One important factor, I believe, is that we've missed series like this. That's why I mention Downton in the headline, though Downton in my opinion is a superior show. The point I'm trying to make is that long-running period dramas that focus heavily on relationships, with a sizeable cast and room for plenty of twists and turns and parallel plots, have a large and faithful fanbase which TV producers should perhaps be more mindful of. There's a reason why Downton, Upstairs Downstairs and, in its day, The Forsyte Saga became such big hits. This is why I hope The Gilded Age will eventually become a bigger thing and fill the void. And maybe ITV should give Beecham House another chance?

Finally, we can expect a new Disney villain – but then what?

"That's just bad storytelling!"

This reaction to the lack of "bad guys" in a game was one of the few worthwhile lines in Strange World, last year's Disney animation offering. I didn't care for the film, for slightly ignoble reasons. 

I could claim that it was because of the bland characters, the unengaging generational conflict which compares very poorly to similar themes in Encanto, the unflattering character design which favours mushroomy noses and small eyes or the sometimes yawn-inducing story. But to tell the truth, what really annoyed me was the eco message, which I knew was coming in one form or another throughout the film. When it was delivered, it was in a different way than I expected, but the moral conveyed still boils down to the same: that we should abandon our modern, comfortable way of life to Save Mother Earth. The "get back in the caves" message always acts a red flag on me. If we'd been spared that, I think I could have forgiven the film much, even the three-legged dog (what demographic is he supposed to appeal to, exactly?).

But, to get back to the quote above from the disreputable adventurer grandfather we're not supposed to root for. (Nor did I: if anyone had my sympathy, it was the farmer dad, especially as his son was such a whiny, ungrateful brat.) When the old reprobate is right, he's right, and he was right here. As per usual, however, his views and those the film wished to pitch didn't match; there's no villain in Strange World. Nor is this a new thing in Disney animation.

Somehow, Disney managed to go from the played-out twist villain trope to no villain at all in several films in a row. Moana's head villain turned out to be something else, though it did still have the crab Tamatoa and his catchy villain song. The only antagonist in Wreck-It Ralph 2 - Ralph Breaks The Internet was a computer virus created by mistake by Ralph and his insecurities. In Frozen 2, the villain was Elsa's and Anna's long-dead grandfather, shown briefly in snow-statue flashbacks, which hardly counts. In Raya and the Last Dragon, the threat was the Druun, a faceless, impersonal plague. No villain in Encanto – though the villain-song style of "We Don't Talk About Bruno" could be a part of the song's success (however, Bruno turns out to be a sweetie). And now Strange World, where the only villains are Ourselves. After all that, I'd begun to despair of ever seeing a memorable bad guy in a Disney film again. For some reason I couldn't quite understand, villains didn't seem to be fashionable. 

And, then, suddenly, a new hope. Disney's animated film of 2023 is set to be Wish, and the trailer features: a villainous king! Voiced by Chris Pine in honour of the good old heartthrob-turns-villain-actor tradition, King Magnifico (subtle) is a good-looking, seemingly popular monarch who promises good times for everyone as long as they "give your wish... to me". Whereupon his eyes turn menacingly yellow, and we hear a sinister laugh echoing in the trailer's background.

Oh boy oh boy, as Mickey himself would say, how I've missed this. I'm a little nervous that Wish will try to accomplish too much, cramming in callbacks to previous Disney films and a lot of side characters. But for Magnifico, the bar isn't set very high. The very fact that he exists pretty much gets him over it. I'm quite happy to give one of my wishes – to once again set my eyes on a front-and-centre, larger-than-life Disney villain –  to him for safekeeping.

Does this mean that Disney animation is on the right track again? Not really. After having once again swapped producers, Disney animation has announced that its new projects will be: Frozen 3, Zootopia 2 and, for Pixar, Toy Story 5. Yes, the sequel avalanche is upon us again. One thing one can say about Disney's animated output these last years, villain-less as it has been, it has featured several new stories which didn't build on already existing franchises. Look, you don't need me to tell you how uninspiring these new titles are. Toy Story 5, really?

As for villains, things look bleak. But hey, I could be wrong. It's not as if the original Frozen and Zootopia didn't have worlds worth revisiting. Maybe Frozen 3 will forgo the nature-vs-civilisation rhetoric of the second installment and dive more deeply into Scandinavian folklore and fairy tales instead? And maybe we get to see Hans again?

Zhivago adaptations (no, the balalaika is not in the book)

This is a bit of a "duty post", to be honest: when I'd read Doctor Zhivago and blogged about it, I mentioned an interest in watching adaptations of the book, partly to see how they'd manage to tell a compelling story with such non-plot-driven source material. I have now watched both the classic film and the TV series, penned by Andrew Davies when the millenium was young and he was at the peak of his adaptation career. So I guess I should write about them.

I had a better time than this grudging introduction makes it sound. As I expected, the film turned out to be the more enjoyable viewing experience, while the TV series was more faithful to the book. But, somewhat unexpectedly, the TV version wasn't as faithful as all that, and it's really easy to be closer to the source material than the film.

Because the film takes great liberties indeed. What was most remarkable wasn't what it cut out – of course, a whole array of side characters who didn't contribute much to the story had to go – but what it added. There are grand set-piece scenes that aren't in the novel at all, such as when a group of deserters confront a new batch of soldiers on their way to the front. The whole framing device, with Zhivago's half-brother telling the story to the newly-found daughter of Zhivago and Lara many years later, is invented. Yes, there is a half-brother in the novel, and a love child, and in the epilogue it's hinted that the former will take care of the latter, but we never actually see them meet.

So the narrative monologues of Alec Guinness were all the script-writer, not Pasternak. Which brings me to a feature which really stood out to me: how good the script was, not least the unheard-of-in-the-novel material. All of Komorovsky's enjoyable cynical zingers, for instance? Not in the book. Add to this the sterling acting from the star-studded cast, and it must be said I hugely preferred watching the film to reading the book. The balalaika may possibly have been a step too far on the soupiness scale, though.

The first hour or so of the TV version, I seriously wondered why Andrew Davies had bothered. I had expected it to be closer to the book from the get-go than the film was, but no, not really. The same narrative short-cuts are taken as in the film: young Yuri is taken in immediately by the Gromekos after his parents' death, thus cutting out boring uncle Nikolai completely; Pasha is caught up in a demonstration where soldiers mow down civilians as a young man, not as a boy; and Lara gets hold of his gun in the process (in the novel, the gun belongs to Lara's brother, not present in either adaptation and no great loss). 

What's more, the TV series takes liberties of its own: it starts with Yuri's father's funeral, not his mother's, and Yuri is supposed to have been present on the train when his father kills himself (in the novel, it was his friend Misha). While Zhivago in the novel was clearly very fond of his mother and didn't really have any relationship with his father, in the TV series, the roles are somewhat inexplicably reversed.

So to start with, the TV series tells roughly the same story as the film less enjoyably. The scenes between Lara and Komarovsky are so drawn out that even I, who will mostly find excuses for all manner of "problematic" erotic power play in fiction, felt uncomfortable. It didn't help that Keira Knightley, undeniably pretty and good in more lively roles, is the wrong type for Lara, especially compared with the smouldering Julie Christie. As the lout in Notting Hill would say: "she's too 'olesome".

The series did pick up after a while, though, and tackled some of the bleaker aspects of the novel, which was gutsy. Lara's husband Pasha was much closer to Pasha in the novel, which I liked; instead of the priggish revolutionary of the film, we see the naïve and good-natured young man who only later becomes implacable, by way of his experiences and disappointments. I appreciated, too, that his final scene with Zhivago was included. Tonya was lovely in both adaptations, and in the Davies version she is allowed to voice some resentment in a conversation with Lara.

You can see how Pasternak's habit of letting his characters drift in and out of the narrative has proved challenging for both adaptations. That Zhivago's half-brother should play such a large part in the film and not be included in the TV series, and that both creative decisions make sense, is an example. Just to make them a little more important to the plot, existing characters are often partly reworked and repurposed: in the TV series, Misha (not included in the film) nourishes an unrequited love for Tonya; in the film, the prison labourer Kostoed (not included the TV series) becomes a colourful figure played by Klaus Kinski. As I mentioned, both adaptations cut out Zhivago's uncle, of whom Zhivago is very fond. But he doesn't really do anything, so out he goes.

To sum up, if you haven't read the novel, I'd say watching the film is quite enough; it does keep the most interesting part of the story (the romance) and is a good watch in its own right. If you have read the novel and are curious to see what a more faithful adaptation looks like, then the TV series could be worth a try. Be prepared for sudden departures from the original story even in the TV version, though. For instance, Davies provides Zhivago and Lara with a son (who for dramatic purposes looks just like his dad). Here, the film was closer to the novel: it was a daughter.

Eurovision time – the good, the bad and the loony

It's time for traditional Eurovision blogging – there's no excuse not to, seeing as Sweden actually won this year! I'm pleased, of course. Loreen's number is a little arty for me and not such a favourite as, say, Måns and his "Heroes". But my, can she belt, and she gave the song her all. A deserved win, in my entirely unbiased opinion. Don't ask me to explain the Struwwelpeter nails, though, because I can't.

Here are some other high- and lowlights from this year's competition:

Melodious hunk of the year: Cyprus The half-Australian singer's super-hero physique was enough to provoke a villain-lover like myself: it's guys like this who are usually in for a good Force choke (or similar) from baddies admired by me. But he was a joy to listen to, with a surprising mastery of high notes. Got a vote from me, not that it made much difference to the statistics.

Frank confession of the year: Switzerland "I don't want to be a soldier, soldier/I don't want to fight with real guns" – well, that's a perfectly valid reason to prefer peace to war, though not often brought up in a Eurovision context, where one typically concentrates on everyone getting along and children holding hands while doves fly overhead. I wasn't expecting downright pacifism to go down very well this year, and maybe this is why the fresh-faced Swiss only climbed to the middle of the field voting-wise, in spite of a sweet voice and professional handling of the classic tonal change. I liked it. Clearly, this boy is better singing than fighting material.

Positive national stereotype of the year (again!): France The French chanson "Voilà" did well back in 2021, and now we get more of the same, with no complaints from me. This chanteuse is so typically French you could easily drop her in a soupy mini-series set in World War Two Paris, where she is entertaining the occupying forces while secretly working for the Resistance, right under the nose of the smitten Obersturmbannführer. Can't you just see his monocled aide-de-camp pointing a gun at her while hissing :"I knew you weren't to be trusted, you slut"? Anyway, I'm getting a bit carried away now. Good song.

Slurred, catchy ditty of the year: Norway This is the song that will be stuck in your head a month from now. While it's probably meant to invoke a rider on a white horse clip-clopping through the majestic landscape of Old Dragonia/New Zealand (judging by the singer's fantasy-warrior-queen getup), it reminded me of a sea shanty, and I'm partial to shanties. The diction was far from clear, though, and the girl-power message pretty basic.

WTF numbers of the year that made the rest look good: Croatia and Finland I nearly included the surreal Serbian number as well, but at least it was seriously meant. What can you say about Croatia? Guys in their underwear and makeup chanting something something dictator bad tractor something, is that what counts as satire nowadays? And what's with the Hercule Poirot moustache, what did I miss? As for that Finland guy, he's got a nerve being miffed (allegedly) because he didn't win. I have no idea why he got to the final with his drunken party song, let alone made second place.

What I've realised by now, though, is that these crazy numbers serve their purpose in Eurovision. There have been years that were overstuffed with competent ballads, which made me less appreciative of how well they were sung as I was too bored. This year, out-there numbers I didn't see the point of made me like the Baltic ballads from Estonia and Lithuania more, although they weren't the most exciting songs on offer.

Wasted opportunity of the year: United Kingdom OK, I can see why the Brits would feel despondent towards Eurovision by now. There have been quite a few times since I last speculated on their lack of success where they have sent good, solid pop tunes and still scored a negligible number of points. But they did do well last year, and this year they hosted the whole show on behalf of the winner Ukraine. 

Positives first. The show was amazing (as jury representatives like to point out). Ukraine was let in on the action in the form of co-host Julia Sanina and several song and dance numbers, and British actress Hannah Waddingham (whom I've seen on stage as the Lady of the Lake in Spamalot) was a hoot. I think it's safe to say that UK:s goodwill was built up to a respectable level.

But then came their song, and it was the kind of slapdash, half-ironic number which has served them so poorly in the past. The light show in the background consisted of the singer making quirky faces. What's more, the lyrics weren't very clearly sung, so the advantage of having English as your first language was missed. It's not the worst thing the UK has sent and probably didn't deserve to come second to last, but the Brits should know by now: please don't try kooky irony in Eurovision.

Well, better luck next time. I really want the UK to do better, as I think that would make them more favourably disposed towards the rest of Europe. Not to mention that I want Germany to send a crowd-pleaser next year and, for the first time in forever, not come last. But for now, I'm just happy Sweden won.

Grown-up political drama on Netflix – or is it?

So this is what happens when I try to watch something that isn't nerdy and/or belonging to a global franchise. Not that I didn't have a good time with the miniseries The Diplomat on Netflix: it had a zingy script, some tense will-they-stop-world-war-three-in-time drama, and good performances, especially from Rufus Sewell as the titular diplomat's husband. I'm just not convinced, given the season's ending, that it's so clever and mature as it thinks it is.

The set-up of the series is that Kate Wyler, a successful American diplomat on her way to do some serious damage limitation in Kabul, is instead hoisted off to become the new US ambassador in Great Britain after a British ship has been torpedoed at sea and an international crisis looms. What Kate doesn't know is that she's being vetted for the position as Vice President, and her political assignment serves as a kind of test. Her husband Hal, who has also had a stellar diplomatic career but is now on the back burner because the Secretary of State doesn't like him, accompanies her. However, it's understood that he's supposed to leave after Kate has settled in as they're divorcing. That is, it's understood by Kate. Hal is a loose cannon and his motives are unclear at the best of times, but one thing is certain: he has no intention of divorcing Kate.

While finding her feet, Kate has to figure out how she can keep an irate British Prime Minister from blowing something up. Forty-odd British sailors have lost their lives in the attack and it looks like Iran is responsible. So of course, this being the kind of show it is, it's not Iran.

Now, to be fair, it's been a staple of political thrillers for a long time that the most likely suspect is not responsible. While it's harder to deliver surprises on the culprit front in this genre than in, say, a classic whodunnit, without looking silly, it doesn't stop writers from trying. The Sinister Third Party is a trope often used, for instance in Agatha Christie adventure stories such as The Secret Adversary and They Came to Baghdad and in James Bond films (I haven't read Ian Fleming's novels, so I can't be sure that his Soviet spies are always so blameless as in the films). And I can see why political thriller writers strive to introduce some kind of twist, even when it doesn't make a lot of sense. It just feels a little flat to simply point the finger at a country that's already considered a major military threat in the real world.

But what do you do if there is no organisation à la Spectre to blame? With The Diplomat I was along for the ride until the final episode. I had no problem with the usual suspects being discarded, especially as the series doesn't pretend that they're innocent little lambkins (with reactions to accusations ranging from "We didn't do it! I'll call off this assassination attempt we've been planning for ages just to prove it" to "Yeah, that sounds like us, but funnily enough I didn't give the order"). But then the reveal comes, and it's so forehead-slappingly stupid I found myself feeling less forgiving towards the show's other missteps.

It's not a solution you haven't thought of: it's one you briefly consider before thinking "no, this show is too clever to do something daft like that". Like I said, the script is good. I was lured into watching it by a trailer full of West Wing-style zingers (well, that and Sewell). But if you scrutinise The Diplomat more closely, you'll find some odd creative choices which make you wonder if the writers are as read up on, for instance, British politics as all that.

Why does the British PM Nicol Trowbridge (the "Nicol" being a dead give-away that the character is modelled on Boris Johnson – at least he doesn't have the hair) gate-crash a diplomatic meeting behind the wheels of a red sports car? Is it likely that his Foreign Secretary Dennison (to whom Kate is attracted) would refer to Brexit as a "self-inflicted wound"? Dennison is supposed to have been a front-runner for the leadership post, yet when does he sound like a Tory at all? Why does Kate's second-in-command Stuart sniffily refer to Trowbridge's erstwhile spin doctor as someone who can make "racists" look cuddly? Who exactly is she supposed to have been working for?

Celia Imrie does her best as the cardigan-clad spin doctor, but nothing about her character feels the least bit credible, and she is responsible for the biggest head-scratching moment apart from the finale reveal, when she claims that Trowbridge is tense because not only Scotland, but also Northern Ireland and Wales are on the verge of breaking out of the United Kingdom. What kind of weird parallel universe is this?

That a political drama has a certain political slant isn't to be wondered at. The West Wing certainly had. But its writers did try, for the most part, to understand the opposition's arguments, not least so they could script characters not belonging to the Bartlet crew in a credible way. There's none of that nuance in The Diplomat, and it does feel like its odder moments are at least partly caused by the writers' blank incomprehension of political opinions other than their own. 

Still, I enjoyed the series, and I'm hoping for a second season. Kate is a bit annoying (I'm not big on hairbrushing, but even I thought she looked aggressively scruffy), but her complicated relationship with Hal is interesting, and there's some amusing back-and-forth between Stuart and his sassy CIA girlfriend. Plus, they can easily retcon some of the silliness from the season finale. Hey, maybe we Swedes did it? We made it look like the Russians framed the Iranians so that we'd be welcomed into Nato with open arms? Believe it or not, that explanation would be less ridiculous than what the series has come up with so far.

Questions raised by The Mandalorian season three

Though I haven't stooped so low as to call those sceptical towards the recent output from franchises I enjoy names, I'm aware that I tend towards the over-positive side of the fandom spectrum. Of course there's a lot to criticise, for instance, in the Disney + Star Wars shows. But still I have an irrational urge to shout "shut up! Just shut up!" when confronted with too many negative fan responses. 

It's not just because of my old affection for the Mighty Mouse, which makes me cringe whenever someone uses the "oooh, Disney's so bad, they only want to make money" argument (I admit, my brand loyalty is waning of late – not because Disney wants to make money, but because they want to preach at the audience while doing it). I'm also somewhat of an anxious consumer. I've witnessed in the past how crucial good viewing figures have been for the continued existence – or not – of my favourite TV shows. That's partly why I've been obsessing over viewer responses to the latest season of The Mandalorian, to the point where it almost overshadowed my own enjoyment of the series. Because if various commentators talk down the season too much, and viewers consequently fail to tune in, Disney might quite simply stop making Star Wars TV shows. And then where would I be?

So, when I say that this season was somewhat unfocused and probably the weakest of The Mandalorian seasons, please let the record reflect that I still liked it very much and want lots more of this particular sort of fare. That said, here are a few points that puzzled me after the season finale aired yesterday:

So, who was the spy, then? An enjoyable part of The Mandalorian from the first has been the episode titles, which can often be interpreted in more than one way. The episode title "The Sin" in season one can refer to Din Djarin taking back Grogu (at that time still known as the Child) from a group of sinister ex-Imperials, after having accepted payment for delivering him. It's a clear violation of Din's wonderfully deal-based creed. But the real sin was handing over Grogu in the first place. The title character of the episode "The Jedi" can be Grogu or Ahsoka (though she left the order years earlier). "The Believer" can be Din Djarin, or the cynic Mayfeld who discovers something to believe in when confronted with a particularly nasty ex-Imperial, or even said ex-Imperial himself: what he believes in may be terrifying, but he does have conviction. And so it goes on.

So when an episode is called "The Spies", you certainly expect to see more than one spy in it. It could just as easily have been called "The Spy" and featured more than one spy, leaving you guessing as to which of them the title specifically singles out in true Mandalorian fashion. But no, here we have an episode title which is unusually insistent on the plural – and only one spy, Elia Kane who we already knew was crooked, is revealed during the run-time of the episode. This may of course be explained in the next season, but then the reveal that one of the assembled Mandalorians was playing false all along will have less of an impact because it has already been quasi-spoiled. In my view, the spy should either have been revealed before the season's end, or they should have gone with the episode title "The Spy" instead.

What's the Armourer's game? This isn't an original observation by any means, but the Armourer – the spiritual leader of the "covert" of Mandalorians Din belongs to – is awfully soft on Bo-Katan Kryze. Din Djarin, who's always toed the line, gets into trouble for having removed his helmet in public (all for the love of his boy) and has to fulfil a task the Armourer herself believes impossible and bring proof of it in order to get accepted again. 

It's another story with Bo-Katan, though she has lived in open defiance of the Armourer's creed. She is integrated into the covert, though that wasn't her original intention; her alleged sighting of a mythical beast is taken by the Armourer at face value without proof; later, she is singled out as the future leader of the Mandalorian people by the Armourer, who asks her to remove her helmet so that she can "walk both ways" and unite the covert and less dogmatic factions of Mandalorians. 

It's not that Bo-Katan hasn't proven herself useful, but still, it's a steep rise to the top for one whom the Armourer was very scathing about in The Book of Boba Fett (in one of the episodes where it forgot it wasn't The Mandalorian). This strange Armourer-behaviour made many speculate that maybe she was the spy, though her motives would in that case have been unclear. As it is, the Armourer remains enigmatic – which I realise is partly the point, but it's starting to get on my nerves.       

Whatever happened to Doctor Pershing? Unpopular opinion: I really liked the Doctor Pershing episode, though admittedly there wasn't much Mando in it. It's hard to pinpoint what I want from political intrigues in Star Wars, but maybe, like my expectations of the franchise or the genre as a whole, it can be summed up with the words: relatable but different. I shudder at clunky parallells with the real world. My heart sinks every time someone calls the Imperials "space Nazis". It's obvious where Lucas got some of the inspiration for his black-hearted Empire from, but still: this is a galaxy far, far away. Let the Empire be evil in its own way!

The limitations of the New Republic as seen in the Pershing episode don't have an obvious real-world counterpart, but it illustrates wider philosophical problems we too can be faced with. What some commentators took away from the episode was that the New Republic was too soft on Pershing and other ex-Imperials, thereby letting itself in for being double-crossed. Me, I saw the complete opposite. 

Pershing is allowed to give a lecture on cloning, but he isn't allowed to practise it or do any research at all. After having lived in a "re-integration" camp, he is housed with other ex-Imperials who are all busily extolling the virtues of the New Republic and condemning the Empire, yet none of them is keen to re-visit that camp. Pershing's job isn't only menial but gives no satisfaction at all, as he's tasked to make an inventory of Imperial technology which will then be scrapped when, according to him, it could be put to good use. His freedom is restricted: he's not allowed to leave a certain zone, and the Republic has planted a mole – double agent Kane – to spy on and employ entrapment strategies on him and other fellow ex-Imperials. 

There are more indications still that the New Republic's "Amnesty programme" isn't all it's cracked up to be, yet you can see their dilemma: ex-Imperials are a threat to their regime, and it can't be easy to know which of the Imps will make model citizens and which will remain bad news. All the same it was clear, at least to me, that they'd set the bar far too low with being "not as bad as the Empire".

But what happened to Doctor Pershing after Kane, seemingly, fried his brains out? And was it so smart to do it when her bosses clearly wanted their clone doctor's brains unfried?         

Will we ever see the end of the helmet rule? Are the Armourer and the other helmet nutters really expecting this genuinely stupid rule to survive, when they live side by side with Bo-Katan's buddies who don't adhere to it? And why hasn't Din Djarin abandoned it a season and a half ago? It's time he and his fellow Mandos saved their helmets for battle and started thinking about the future of their civilisation. Because how do you find a mate and procreate with your helmet on?